Harrison’s Cave, Barbados

Harrison's Cave was first mentioned in written records in 1795 and then effectively forgotten, until Jack Peeples rediscovered it in the early 1970s. The government developed it as a tram tour and opened it to the public in 1981.

It sits in the central uplands of Barbados at 700 feet above sea level, in country defined by three things: gullies, sinkholes and caverns. The cave is a straightforward product of water erosion through limestone, and the calcium-rich water still running through it built the formations you come to see. The same site is an entrance to Welchman Hall Gully, which is closed.

You see it from a tram, which is unusual and is the reason the cave suits people who could not manage a scramble. At points along the route visitors get off and walk up close to the formations.

The stops have names and they are the shape of the tour. The Great Hall is an enormous cavern over 50 feet high. After it the tram halts at The Village, where formations have met and joined into columns over thousands of years. Then The Chapel, The Rotunda and The Altar.

Because the water is still working, the cave is active rather than finished: pools, running water and formations still gaining a little every year. It sits close enough to the middle of the island to reach from anywhere on Barbados in well under an hour, and the tram means booking ahead is sensible.

The tram runs in through the Boyce Tunnel and reaches every depth of the cave, which is what makes the whole system visitable without any caving at all. It is one of the few show caves anywhere that a wheelchair user and a small child can see on the same terms as everyone else, and that is a deliberate piece of design rather than a happy accident of the geology.